Thread by @lymanstoneky

I do think, as long as we have notable excess mortality and rising cases, vaccinated people should mask in indoors settings since you can still contract/spread it. I also think people with the flulike symptoms or just a cough should mask. And you should wipe when you poop.

Please commit to minimum standards of decency like wearing pants when out of the house and masking when there’s a plausible chance you have a contagious illness, or when there is a very unusual large spike in a contagious illness in your community.

If you’re on team don’t-wash-after-wiping, I mean I guess you do you, but that’s gross and don’t expect the rest of society to act like you’re not gross. Likewise, please wear a mask when you are probably contagious or lots of other people are.

Maybe you just have a cold and the worst that’s gonna happen is I will get a sniffle and my kid will get sick and miss a day of school and I will miss a day of work but actually that’s a ton more inconvenient than you just putting a piece of hygienic non woven fabric n your face.

Your kid is uncomfortable in a mask? Okay. I won’t bully your kid into wearing a mask because your kid is not a mature adult. You are. Act like it. If you’re coughing after the allergy meds should have kicked in, it’s probably not allergies.

And probably part of being a good parent is gradually helping your child learn to do things like wash their hands, cover their mouth when they sneeze, not talk with their mouth full, and wear a mask when sick and in enclosed spaces.

Your 5 year old can’t do all this stuff well. Your 9 year old is learning. Your 12 year old really ought to have it figured out. Your 16 year old should have it down pat. It’s like potty training for your face.

This is probably false. Most states in the US have unusually high death rates right now. People just don’t know this. So many teams people tel me “COVID wasn’t so bad here” then I look up the data and deaths are 20% over normal. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

https://twitter.com/bouje99/status/1420068921001005059

“But COVID will be here forever.”

Yes, forever, if a person or a household member has flulike symptoms, or if a state is experiencing excess mortality from infectious disease, people should wear masks. Those two events are not extremely common.

Even if COVID is with us forever, excess mortality from COVID will eventually dissipate, one way or another. So the current state of frequent masking will fade.

But in the future yes if a school has more than 5 or 6 flu cases, every kid should mask!

This is normal in many countries! It saves lives! It’s not terribly inconvenient!

So the argument isn’t “masks forever and always til we die” it’s “surely we have now learned that with a little effort we can dramatically reduce flu deaths and save a ton of lives of kids and elders”

If we would cancel school for flu cases a little more often and have kids mask up when classmates are out sick, we could dramatically reduce childhood influenza, which has large negative costs on kids. That would be a huge win!

And if in the process kids spend less time in soul-destroying Learning Warehouses, thumbs up to that too!